The Great Gatsby - Planet eBook

We were at a

We were at a particularly tipsy table. That was my fault— Gatsby had been called to the phone and I’d enjoyed these same people only two weeks before. But what had amused me then turned septic on the air now. ‘How do you feel, Miss Baedeker?’ The girl addressed was trying, unsuccessfully, to slump against my shoulder. At this inquiry she sat up and opened her eyes. ‘Wha?’ A massive and lethargic woman, who had been urging Daisy to play golf with her at the local club tomorrow, spoke in Miss Baedeker’s defence: ‘Oh, she’s all right now. When she’s had five or six cocktails she always starts screaming like that. I tell her she ought to leave it alone.’ ‘I do leave it alone,’ affirmed the accused hollowly. ‘We heard you yelling, so I said to Doc Civet here: ‘There’s somebody that needs your help, Doc.’ ‘ ‘She’s much obliged, I’m sure,’ said another friend, without gratitude. ‘But you got her dress all wet when you stuck her head in the pool.’ ‘Anything I hate is to get my head stuck in a pool,’ mumbled Miss Baedeker. ‘They almost drowned me once over in New Jersey.’ ‘Then you ought to leave it alone,’ countered Doctor Civet. ‘Speak for yourself!’ cried Miss Baedeker violently. ‘Your hand shakes. I wouldn’t let you operate on me!’ It was like that. Almost the last thing I remember was 11 TheGreatGatsby

standing with Daisy and watching the moving picture director and his Star. They were still under the white plum tree and their faces were touching except for a pale thin ray of moonlight between. It occurred to me that he had been very slowly bending toward her all evening to attain this proximity, and even while I watched I saw him stoop one ultimate degree and kiss at her cheek. ‘I like her,’ said Daisy, ‘I think she’s lovely.’ But the rest offended her—and inarguably, because it wasn’t a gesture but an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented ‘place’ that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village—appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand. I sat on the front steps with them while they waited for their car. It was dark here in front: only the bright door sent ten square feet of light volleying out into the soft black morning. Sometimes a shadow moved against a dressingroom blind above, gave way to another shadow, an indefinite procession of shadows, who rouged and powdered in an invisible glass. ‘Who is this Gatsby anyhow?’ demanded Tom suddenly. ‘Some big bootlegger?’ ‘Where’d you hear that?’ I inquired. ‘I didn’t hear it. I imagined it. A lot of these newly rich people are just big bootleggers, you know.’ ‘Not Gatsby,’ I said shortly. Free eBooks at PlaneteBook.com 11